AMD has confirmed that new cards will be released this year and HD 7000-series parts as their plans for 2013 were clarified.

There has been a lot of talk lately about AMD’s official GPU strategy for 2013 and how it flew in the fact of numerous rumors. Instead of releasing a desktop graphics architecture that improves upon the HD 7000-series’ performance and feature set, it looked increasingly like that wouldn’t happen in the first three quarters of this year. We now have some additional details from AMD’s top brass about what this year will look like from their perspective.

First of all, some clarification is in order. While Sea Islands features the same GCN architecture as the current generation, it utilizes a new chip configuration which augments efficiency without sacrificing performance. According to AMD, the Sea Islands chips are an incremental update that’s meant to focus on OEM notebook design cycles and gain some much-needed design wins in the mobile space. The Solar System HD 8000M-series is simply a subset of the Sea Islands family, though the upcoming “Mars” chip (likely used in the HD 8970M) is built using an entirely different design.

With that off the table, AMD confirmed previous reports and reiterated that they don’t intend to release a new desktop graphics series for the time being. Through the first half of 2013 expect the high-end product stack (the HD 7900-series and HD 7800-series) to remain unchanged while the HD 7970 GHz Edition will continue on as their fastest single GPU card throughout 2013.

However, while there may not be a brand new GPU architecture from AMD before Q4, cards will certainly be released within the HD 7000-series’ stack in order to flesh out its top-to-bottom offering. As a matter of fact, we now have official confirmation that additional HD 7000-series products will be available in the first half of 2013. Naturally this strategy isn’t aiming to replace the enthusiast products so expect a bridge offering that lies somewhere between the HD 7700 and HD 7800 SKUs.

One of the widely-rumored HD 7800-series successors was the so-called “Oland” chip but once again, AMD put this rumor to rest. For now, Oland will solely be used in the OEM-only HD 8600 series, though we wouldn’t be surprised to see it morph into the desktop product space as a HD 7000-series filler SKU.

While 2013 may not hold a ton of excitement from AMD from the engineering side, several of their strategic focuses are beginning to pay dividends. Relations with ISVs have been improved dramatically, resulting in a renaissance for the Gaming Evolved program. This has allowed for the inclusion of several industry leading Never Settle gaming bundles alongside Radeon graphics cards. Supposedly, this has led to record sales of AMD graphics cards with several SKUs selling out on Newegg and other retailers.

AMD doesn’t have a major announcement planned (at least not publically) but this company certainly isn’t sitting idle either. They’re still on track to introduce a new architecture before the closing days of 2013 and there are likely some pleasant surprises on the horizon as well. All of these announcements don’t represent delays though, supposedly the internal graphics roadmap hasn’t changed in any way. Regardless of whether you agree with this strategy or not, it’s great to see that AMD has so much confidence in their current lineup.

Under no circumstance does AMD intend to relinquish a grip on their graphics leadership so this could actually mark the beginning of a new battle for supremacy rather than the end of market competition as some naysayers would have you believe.

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Comments (31)

Nvidia Titan is due out on the 18th in extremely limited quanitities. It is supposed to have ~85% the performance of the GTX690 as just a single GK110, color me impressed. Price aside, I might be a while until we see competition from AMD.

I think AMD doesn’t have the answer to the so rumored Titan so they are running back to their drawing boards and pretending that they are focused on console launch from Sony and MSFT. I was about to buy 2*XFX GHz Ed. from NCIX but I decided to cancel in anticipation for the Titan’s release. If it beats 2* AMD R7970 GHz Ed in CF then that’s what I want. Hey AMD, how about you quit slacking and give us something to cheer about because Nvidia will surely beat you to the punch and you will have no one to blame for being second best in GPU market too. We want something to rival the Titan from you now!

I now they will offer best value/performance but you are looking at being outdone in terms of sheer graphics power. I do have a price cap and that is $800 for a Titan like card and I doubt that they will have it at that price, so most likely I might have to go back and grab the 2 7970GHz Ed.cards. What I want is AMD to also have a flagship card that can mop the floor with whatever Nvidia has to offer and best them in price. When it comes to price/performance, AMD takes hands down but it’s time we get a proper 7990 or something to compete with Titan.

Titan card is also looking to be a soft launch, without many units being available at launch. The card is interesting to me but the rumored price point of $900 means I won’t even consider it. I’m willing to go $400-500 for highest end single GPU, but not $900.

You say and I quote “AMD to also have a flagship card”. Well AMD did come out with a card that mops the competition and that card is in the name of the Asus ROG Ares II. Yes it is dual gpu but from exactly what you said it is a single card. And it eats anything NVIDIA has for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And the cooler on it does a fantastic job.

AMD doesn’t have the manpower, nor the money to do new APU’s, 8000 series cards, power next gen consoles, offer incredible game bundles, improve driver performance (not just fixes), as well as the R&D at the same time. It just can’t be done.

Actually yes pretending. In fact I went ahead and bought the 2 XFX radeon HD 7970GHz since they’re bang for buck. AMD didn’t have and still doesn’t an answer to the gtx 690. And soon won’t have an answer for Titan. If nvidia can make tegra 3&4 and still release gtx 600 series and soon 700 then why doesn’t AMD focus on providing us with a refresh this year? Anything to rival gtx 690 or Titan? Nope, all 7990 are based on the vendors’ own efforts. Until today AMD has so far failed to provide th reference card for 7990.

I don’t think AMD is concerned right now about have getting to claim best single GPU card anymore (or sheer graphics power).

They are in a restructuring phase right now to ensure they get their next-gen products done right (and to do that requires them to focus their priorities and become leaner).

There is no real profitable market for Titan or Dual GPU cards. The ARES II and Titan will be limited in terms of just how many are manufactured. With AMD’s troubles to please their investors, get back to being profitable, they needed to take their time with their nextgen 8000 series cards. Both nextgen consoles are confirmed to be running AMD hardware, so AMD should still have get money for R&D and stay relevant.

There is truly no reason for AMD to waste R&D money and time on small markets (7990 or compete with Titan), when in reality if customers are willing to pay that much for a single graphics card to match that performance, can just go CrossFire.

ARES 2 or Titan are for the extreme enthusiasts and getting bragging rights is not critical for the average consumer who looks for best performance for value.

I like your take on this. Good points. I guess the small niche isn’t that necessary when it comes to bragging rights. But I’d still like to see an official AMD Radeon HD 7990 so I could get my hands on one without overpaying for Ares II or something similar.

Sidenote: would it be worth to consider GTX 690 over XFX HD 7970 GHz Ed?

I guess only time will tell whether this decision by AMD pays off at the end.
I would hate to see this being a big mistake later on if their “next gen products” is something like bulldozer or nvidia’s fermi cards

I love trolls like you who criticizes every single word someone states. You knew 100% percent what I meant and furthermore you did not even comment on the purpose of my statement. You simply replied back with a troll comment that did not have any meaning as to what I meant by my statement. So to put it correctly for trolls alike, the fastest video card on the market is the ASUS ROG Ares II which has an AMD GPU inside it. The GPU belongs to AMD. Hope next time you reply to something you actually contribute to the post instead posting non-sense. Thank you and have a good day.

Who would want a reference card anyways when you can get a non-reference with better pcb layouts, better components, better coolers, etc. And of course AMD has reference 7990 cards. How do you think they tested them? *face palm* AMD didn’t want to release 7990 reference to retail. You act like they failed at it. Not sure why they easily could have if they wanted to, for some reason they chose to just sell the GPU’s to AIB partners instead which again is no big deal. Most people wait for non-reference cards to hit the market before buying anyways for obvious reasons.

1) I don’t come here trolling and if you look around you’ll see that I have actually commented in many articles and read tech news on this site daily. So please take that back kindly. Thanks

2)AMD DOES NOT have a reference 7990 card. Nvidia introduced their GTX 690 and AIB made their own following the same footprints. AMD DOES NOT have a reference 7990 hence the Devil 13 and ASUS Ares II being the only builds by AIB who felt that something was missing.

3) The GPU belongs to ASUS, next time check your facts. I make something, it belongs to me, not the person/company that gave me a reference design to follow and in this case AMD never gave any.

4) If anyone is posting nonsense it’s you. Give me link to an article that shows AMD personnel displaying a reference 7990 card like Nvidia did. Or just give me a link to a press release or an article that says AMD made a reference card for 7990. Until today they don’t have one. AIB make their own by combining 2 7970 and the power draw is insane and that forced the Devil 13 by Powercolour to be discontinued.

5) I actually own AMD cards, I moved from Nvidia since I didn’t like how the SLI was messing up with my games. Bad experience and now I went ahead and grabbed myself 2 XFX 7970GHz which work like a charm.

6) I like competition and competition fuels better pricing. So I would have appreciated if AMD gave the AIB a reference design instead of just ignoring the big FU from Nvidia when they released the GTX 690 and now GTX Titan.

Hero, James J was right about you being a zero. You say the GPU in the ASUS Ares belongs to ASUS. You need to become more familiar with PC components. The GPU that is soldered onto the ASUS Ares PCB belongs to and was developed by AMD. AMD supplies their vendors with GPU’s. ASUS custom designed their PCB and cooler. You ought to do a little research before posting things like that. If you were on a forum and posted that you would have got your a** chewed out for saying that lol.

Now about what you said in your #4 statement. You like to put words in peoples mouths I see. No where did I ever say AMD displayed a reference 7990 video card. I never said that no where. I simply said of course AMD had a reference video card of the 7990. How on earth do you think they tested the darn thing. That is just common sense man. Most likely it looked just like a reference video card you would see from AMD. Or it could have been more crude, but either way they had some reference design to test the 7990 GPU before mass producing the GPU. Again this is just common sense. And again to clarify things, this is what I was referring to as you knew but you like to twist around what people say.

More about your #4 statement you say “Until today they don’t have one. AIB make their own by combining 2 7970 and the power draw is insane and that forced the Devil 13 by Powercolour to be discontinued”. The Devil 13 was not forced to be discontinued. Where do you get your facts, I am pretty sure you are just spewing shit out of your mouth. The Devil 13 was a small production run. They are simply just running out of available cards. It wasn’t a video card that Powercolor intended selling a lot of. It only appealed to the extremists in PC Gaming and they knew there was not a large market for the cards, so they made a limited supply of them. The same thing NVIDIA is doing with the TITAN.

Furthermore you say “AIB make their own by combining 2 7970 GPU’s”. You say that like it’s abnormal and completely wrong. When infact it is normal as history shows us. Look at the 6990. It had 2 6970 GPU’s on it. Look at the 5970 too for instance, it had 2 5870 GPU’s on it. NVIDIA GTX 690 it has 2 680 GPU’s on it. Yeah . . .

Please before you post actually know what you are really saying. It is ok to be wrong but when you know you are, like in this case, just man up and actually learn something from it please.

Ok I will do some manning up since you will not. After posting this I thought about what I said briefly about the 7990 reference, and perhaps maybe they didn’t have some sort of reference design they tested the video card with in house since they are just 2 7970 GPU’s. But I may be wrong in full glory and I admit. But they still could have been experimenting with a 7990 reference card and just scrapped it. You don’t know that either. Anyhow everything else I posted is valid. Hopefully you don’t overlook it all. I sort of see you just overlooking all the substance of the post.

Yes it belongs to AMD in terms of who developed the PCB but the final product belongs to ASUS, not AMD. AMD didn’t put together 2 7970 PCB, ASUS did. They make the final cards and pay royalties coming from sales to AMD. When I enter an agreement to make a product after you design and I introduce some altering and sell it, I sell it under my brand while stating it contains your design. That product is going to be listed under my brand.The reason I said it belongs to ASUS.

I didn’t say that you said “AMD displayed a reference 7990″. I said AMD doesn’t have a reference video card for 7990 which is true. You said they do because that’s how AIB got theirs and I simply asked you to show me an article where it says AMD has a reference design for 7990. I say they don’t and I can even bring you an article and post it here saying that AMD doesn’t have a reference 7990.

It’s a fact that 7990 draws more power than GTX 690. And I see this as the reason they make limited amount of 7990, from ASUS to Powercolour. I apologize if I made it sound like Powercolour was forced to discontinue it. I would have liked a product that could compete with GTX 690 without being so massive and drawing so much power.

I didn’t say that AIB make their own to sound as if it’s abnormal. After all, it’s what they do, design their own PCB and such once they are given a reference card. However, in this case they weren’t and haven’t been given any reference board for 7990.

I didn’t twist anything and I quote you here, ” I simply said of course AMD had a reference video card of the 7990″ and I said, AMD doesn’t have one and if they do please show me where in the tech news was it announced that AMD has a reference 7990. So no, I didn’t twist anything, I simply refuted your claim and asked you to show me a proof that AMD had a reference board for 7990,which you haven’t provide. That makes your statement false.

“How on earth do you think they tested the darn thing. That is just common sense man.” Manufactures do their own testing. They don’t need AMD for that, and even if they had AMD test it, doesn’t mean AMD came up with a reference 7990.

I don’t come here to comment and argue and call people troll or tell them their asses would have been chewed. That to me is childish. I simply stated the fact that AMD doesn’t have a reference 7990 hence AIB effort to customize their own, ASUS Ares II and PowerColor Devil 13. It’s funny how this keeps on going when I simply said I’d like to see competition from AMD. And competition means better price for consumers. If you don’t understand that then that’s fine but don’t be calling names. Thanks

I don’t overlook anything at all. I am actually surprised at how you guys took what I said and made it into a troll comment. I did misstate somethings and I owned up to that in the reply. I said what I said and I know to be true and I gave examples. All I was asking is for AMD in-house reference card. And I remember an article regarding a reference card for 7990 from Bit-tech. They are finally working on it. So they are going to release a reference design for 7990 and I hope it doesn’t suck as much power as the current offerings. Here’s the article and I hope this sorts things out. If I’m wrong, then I apologize and I am the kind of person that owns up to his dealings. Cheers and article at the bottom.

How is he trolling exactly? He clearly stated a valid response about the fact that the Ares II is literally not an AMD product inasmuch as the fact is concerned that it’s two HD7970 chips combined by a third-party manufacturer. It’s “competitor” is the GTX690, which is an official nVidia product. You need to do some serious growing up to do if you think that you can simply accuse people of trolling and then use that 12-year-old tactic of wishing someone a good day. Grow up!

Totally agree with you and I got pissed when I read that 12 year old’s comment about the trolling accusation. This trolling nonesense went out of style about 3 years ago, people need to grow thicker skin and argue constructively if they don’t like what someone writes, instead of saying “you’re a troll”. Not to mention, you were correct to begin with, but some people don’t know the facts they only think they have a grasp on it.

I tried to explain as much as I could but you can see where that got me. I gave up after my last response that I included an article for this subject and I knew I wouldn’t be getting a reply from either one of the people that decided to argue and resort to name calling. I’m glad someone here has the ability to know facts from fictions. Thanks bud. Cheers!